Private Sector Job Creation

Friday's unemployment report was indicative of the glacial pace this economic recovery has been taking. There were only 71,000 private sector jobs created in the month of July, which wasn't enough to change the national unemployment rate of 9.5 percent. It would take roughly 200,000 jobs to affect the unemployment rate; it takes somewhere between 100,000 and 125,000 jobs created per month just to keep pace with population growth.

So 71,000 jobs created per month isn't going to cut it. On the other hand, if you look solely at private-sector job creation, that's the highest number we've had in three months. We've had some screwy things going on with the employment numbers because of census jobs, but in the private sector, recent months look like this:

July: 71,000

June: 31,000

May: 51,000

April: 241,000

March: 158,000

February: 62,000

So the pattern appears to be a lack of a pattern. One step up, and one step back.